Of the cruel, bad and ugly

My daughter has just started babbling.  She loves looking at pictures in story books and speaking with them. Although she doesn’t really understand what I read out to her, it scares me to think of the day that she will actually learn and comprehend this stuff.

Look at all the popular stories for children – Snow White, Rapunzel, The Ugly Duckling, Three Little Pigs et al. All of them are centered around a wicked stepmother, a jealous queen or worse still, concepts of ugly and bad!

Why would I want to drill into her that looking beautiful is even a virtue? I will someday have to explain to her what it means to look ugly. She will probably think that people feeling jealous or being cruel is acceptable, because her childhood stories revolved around these emotions. Of course, in all these stories, the good guy wins at the end of the day, but my point is – why even tell children the negative things to begin with?

I know, the sad fact is that she will anyway grow up to understand and probably use these terms in some context or the other, but I hate to be the one teaching her this. It feels like I am killing her innocence, it just feels so… wrong.

I would rather have her confuse a wolf with a wolverine, or even better, think that the wolf is a smoking hot picture of Hugh Jackman than a big bad guy who goes around blowing down pigs houses.  So instead of looking at a story book today, we read the latest issue of Lonely Planet.  :) 

But hope is not lost, because I found this wonderful publishing house based in Chennai – Tulika. Check out their stuff, it really is heartwarming and oh-so-Indian!  http://www.tulikabooks.com/. Can’t wait to go an ransack their store! 

Middle School Love

My fondest childhood memories revolve around middle / high school, where I made friends for life and found love.

Yes, love. Undying and pure. Love for the English language and everything wonderful associated with it. News, diary, book reviews, ERCs! What initially seemed to be a silly homework ritual gradually took over my life. I fell in love with the language; I fell in love with writing. I had found my space.

I would eagerly await your comments on the assignments I submitted to you. To me, it meant the world when you had a few nice words to say about my efforts. Rani Ma’m, do you know, I still have a midterm test note book from class VI? It was a test that I almost scored a centum on in English!!! What I hold dear to my heart is the page long comment you had written along with it.  

I felt that same rush of emotion when I saw your comment on my blog a few weeks back. That is what prompted me to write this post.

During my engineering days, I decided to run the mad, mad GRE rat race like all my batch mates, knowing fully well that I was never cut out for an MS. Looking back at it now,  I don’t regret it one bit. Only because I loved learning the word list of Baron’s cover to cover!

Till today, I write. Helluva lot! (Please excuse the slang J )I write when I am elated and oh, I definitely write when I am sad / angry. I document my travel, I write about issues that make me think. I write on paper, I write on my phone, computer, a tablet, I write in my head, just about anywhere. I write them long, short, as poetry, just about anything. Writing is what helps me maintain some semblance of sanity when things go awry. It gives my life invaluable perspective. Don’t judge me by the number of entries on my blog. I consciously choose not to publish everything that I write J    

So today, it is only befitting to thank you for making me fall in love. Fall in love with everything nice – books, ink pens, reading and writing. Thank you for gently nudging me into developing opinions and supporting me to voice them in a manner that is acceptable socially. Thank you for inspiring me and instilling that sense of awe for the language.

People say my newborn daughter looks nothing like me. But I sure do hope that she has inherited this love. For, she will not be fortunate enough to study under a person as wonderful as you.

Dear Bollywood...

Dear Bollywood,

I am so upset with you. No, not because you churn out one mindless movie after another (that has become acceptable now), with that occasional streak of brilliance in between to save your face. It is because I am deeply hurt and offended by how you misrepresent South Indian-ness in all the crass that you produce.

You know, you occupy a really huge mind-share in Indians, especially upwards of the Vindhyas, much more than you are worthy of. Given that, you ought to be a tad bit more responsible in your portrayal of people and their sensibilities, however funny you may want it to seem. This is long overdue. I have a few things to tell you…

Food: You really touched a raw nerve here. I believe we have way more advanced gastronomical acumen than to consume curd with soy sauce and ajinomoto, and most definitely not with the table manners that you have revoltingly depicted. Curd is our elixir. I would like to invite you home for lunch. I will teach you how we eat our curd rice. It is with this mind-blowing accompaniment called “vadumanga”, which is made during summers and preserved in pickled brine. I should probably arrange to send you some everyday so that the curd goes down your system and cleanses your brains, while the spice of the vadumanga grinds down your thick skin.

People: Our heroes may not have the metrosexuality to lie in a bathtub full of roses to advertise for beauty soaps. They certainly do not have the machismo of revealing butt cracks in hot swimwear either. But I would like to think most of the reigning heroes are comfortably in between, with way more cerebral and creative wealth than yours. So please stop portraying our men like big fat goons with drawn up veshtis, generous visuals of their underwear, abominable mustaches, flashy jewellery and more than abundant body hair. Speaking of body hair, let us rewind a decade or so and take a moment to digest the volume of collective hair of the then Kumars, Kapoors, Deols and the Khans.

About our women, well, the lesser said, the better. I don’t think you have the mental maturity for this discussion as yet.

Language: Let me do you a favour and help you enrich your general knowledge a little bit. We have four states here, each with its own beautiful language. So, one can safely presume that our vocabulary is more advanced than the “Ayyos” / “Aiyyas” and the exaggerated “aaahs”  / “ooohs” that you pepper around your characters, especially in that irritating nasal tone.

I wanted to end this post with a caustic remark on the first and last syllables of your name. Well, I'll just let that be... because it will take you light years to understand the joke.